1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to banner software and methods of using such software to navigate networks such as the World Wide Web (WWW), intranets and extranets and, more particularly, to customizable banners that offer menus to multiple URLs and other destinations on the network.
2. Discussion of the Background Art
Business marketing is very desirable of targeting their customers needs and interests as part of their effort to sell products and services. The advent of the global network termed the Internet, called the World Wide Web (WWW or WEB) has opened up an entire new medium for marketing in conjunction with entertainment, educational and business information and services available to end-users.
Marketing over the portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web, or “Web” for short, is growing. Advertisements on the Web are commonplace, sophisticated, and elaborate, and Internet advertising expense is expanding accordingly. In many Web applications, advertisements are presented as banners that are displayed prominently on a Web display, referred to as a Web page. If a user is attracted by the banner or banner advertisement, the user can click-on the banner (i.e., by positioning a screen cursor on the banner and then depressing a button on a mouse or other input device). The banner has an underlying “hyperlink” to another Web site that is associated with the banner, usually the home site of the advertiser. Clicking on the banner invokes a path to the advertiser's designated page or hyperlink. Typically, the name of the path is presented to the user in the form of a single uniform resource listing (“URL”) followed by a directory path designating the particular page in the site that the advertiser wishes to be displayed.
In recent years, the emergence of the World Wide Web as a venue for marketing and brand-building has created a great demand for the use of images and multi-media files which can be displayed on World Wide Web pages as advertisements by a sponsor. Such images are typically GIF or JPEG image format files of a specified dimension, which are inserted either statically by an HTML author at the time an HTML page is created or inserted dynamically in an HTML page by advertising banner rotation software residing on a remote Web server or other server computer. Typically, when such a banner is presented to the end-user via a Web browser, this display event is recorded via the remote advertising banner rotation software. If the user should click-on or select the displayed banner, a single course of action is performed, which is normally to transfer the end-user, via their browser, to an alternate WWW page or URL through an HTML hyperlink.
Banner ads can be created using various rich media technologies, such as the Java development language or in various multi-media formats such as Macromedia Flash or Shockwave. Banners developed using one of these programming based tools allow the developer to associate a wide range of applications with a banner ad, however, the process of programming a rich media banner advertisement requires considerable technical expertise.
Several disadvantages are inherent in the present state of banner technology. Although Web pages may be viewed off-line, i.e. when the user is not currently connected to the Internet, no record of such ad banner viewing is captured which leads to under-reporting of end-user behavior to the ad sponsor, i.e. the number of times their ad has been viewed by a user. A sponsor or advertiser is limited to specifying a single course of action for the user in the event the user selects or clicks on their displayed banner ad.
It is highly desirable to have a method and system which (i) permits banner ad viewing data to be captured whether the banner ad is viewed on-line or off-line; (ii) allows the sponsor, advertiser, or publisher of the banner to specify multiple events or sites to which the user may go when the user clicks on the displayed banner; and (iii) allows these events, sites, and options to be specified, changed, and updated by the advertiser, sponsor, or publisher with only novice computer level skills.
When a user clicks on a banner advertisement, the user indicates that he or she has gained an “impression” of the advertisement. These types of advertisements are limited in scope in that they give the viewer only one URL to go to. The user's interest can be increased by giving the user more choices or opportunities to view different targeted advertisements or URLs related to marketing. It is, therefore, highly desirable to be able to provide a more interesting banner to a viewer or end-user both on-line when connected to a network such as the World Wide Web (Internet) or intranet and off-line when not connected to a network. It is also desirable to provide advertising information to the customer in a fashion that will enhance the viewer's experience of using the Internet and encourage the user to visit the advertiser's banner. It is also highly desirable to provide a system for the advertiser or publisher to create, update, and change choice's and content of the banner.
There is a need for making a set of options available to the end-user, particularly, a customer or consumer that selects or clicks on a displayed banner ad. There is also a need for a system and method for allowing the publisher to define, update, and periodically update, with novice level computer skills, the set of end-user options presented to the end-user when the end-user selects or clicks on a displayed banner ad. There is also a need for capturing display event statistics for a banner ad whether the end-user is viewing the banner ad either off-line or on-line.